10.3. Pick the Right Place

Now that you've chosen a band and channel, it's time to find the right spot to put the base station. I have a pile of advice for how to place your gateway in your home or office. In testing, you might need to change the band or channel, even!

When you walk around with a cell phone, the number of bars showing signal strength varies, depending on the strength of signals received from nearby cellular network transmitters. It's the same issue over a much smaller space when you connect a computer to a Wi-Fi gateway. Depending on where you place the base station, its signal may or may or not penetrate with enough strength to be useful.